Treating flour with gaseous chlorine is well known in the baking industry. Flour treatment by chlorine has been found to be necessary for the production of baked products with the appropriate volume, tenderness and handling properties such as, for example, high quality cakes when using a high-ratio cake formulation. A high ratio cake formulation is one in which the weight ratio of sugar to flour in the cake is between 1:1 and 1:1.4. The difference in concentration of flour in the high ratio cakes as compared to sugar, places a greater strain on the flour during the creation of a cake structure.
If a high ratio cake is made from untreated flour, it appears to function quite normally in the earlier stages of batter development. Bell et al., J. Food Technol., 10, 147-156 (1975). The bubbles in the aerated batter expand, and the internal batter temperature rises at a similar rate to batter made from chlorine-treated flour. Grider et al., Food Microstructure, 2, 153-160 (1983). Later in the baking process, differences in the performance of batters made from untreated and chlorine-treated flours begin to appear. Batters formulated from untreated flour rise to a greater height than batters formulated from chlorine-treated flour. However, late in the bake the baked product formulated with the untreated batters falls more rapidly, and continues to fall as the baked good cools. Russo et al., J. Food Technol., 5, 363-374 (1970); Frazier et al., Chemy Ind., 1008-1010 (1974); Cauvain, J. Sci. Food Agric., 26, 1861-1868 (1975).
Examination of the cake crumb structures has revealed considerable differences in the sizes and appearances of the walls of the air cells in the crumb. Batters containing chlorine treated flours generally result in cakes having discrete, well-formed air cells with smooth cell walls, formed by starch granules embedded in a continuous protein matrix. Grider et al., Food Microstructure, 2, 153-160 (1983). In contrast, cakes made with untreated flours have irregular, deformed air cells with ragged cell walls, in which the protein matrix appears to be partly disrupted. It is believed that the smaller air cells are formed from the collapse of larger cells resulting in a new network of broken cells smaller in size than the original larger cells. Thus, it appears that the cell walls of a cake made from untreated flours are inherently weak and begin to deform and collapse under the weight of the cake when the gas pressure dissipates from within the cell structure.
Additionally, there is evidence that some gas cells remain intact at the end of the bake, and are subsequently crushed by the external pressure when the water vapor within them condenses. This phenomenon would account for the accelerated collapse of the cake structure observed immediately after leaving the oven.
Thus, high ratio cake mixes have employed chlorine-treated flour in their formulation. Although chlorine-treated flour has been used in Great Britain and the United States for many years, this use is not permitted in most of the Continental European countries. At the present time chlorine is permitted for use in cake flour, but its continued use as a flour additive is in question because of safety concerns with the occupational use of chlorine and the safety of consuming chlorinated organic compounds in general. Hodge, Baking Industries Journal, July, page 14 (1975). There have been many attempts to formulate an acceptable alternative to chlorinated flour high ratio cakes.
Gough et al., CRC Critical Rev. in Food Science and Nutrition, September, pp. 91-113 (1978), disclose a review of the known alternatives to the chlorination of flour including heat treating the flour. See Russo et al., British Patent No. 1,110,771 and Cauvain et al., J. Sci. Food Agric., 26, 1861-1868 (1975).
In Gough et al., a flour was heat treated at 200.degree. C. (392.degree. F.) for 6 minutes. Egg albumen was then added to increase the cake volume of the high ratio cake, but the organoleptic properties of the cake were undesirably changed. Thus, only a partial solution was provided.
These known alternatives to using chlorinated flour in a high ratio cake mix fail to perform as well as chlorinated flour high ratio cake mixes in terms of volume, density, fragility, and texture of the resulting cake. As a result, all high-ratio baking compositions produced commercially are made of and depend upon chlorinated flour. Thus, a substantial need exists for a high ratio baking composition in which the flour does not require treatment by chlorination.